What drives a polymath's insatiable curiosity and love for scientific method?

[Steve Kane]

I am a total geek, that is to say I am totally and obsessively interested in absolutely everything that might submit to scientific method, and a few wild cards (penny shares?), that I keep an eye on. And always have been, for sixty years now.

Not being an idiot two things excite me most,

1) a credible item that seems to overturn my most cherised assumptions,

2) where some esoteric insight within a very obscure discipline that "nobody outside it" could ever get, is remarkably similar to something far away in a similarly deep silo.

Lobbing it from one silo into the other and standing back, can be fun.
I have yet to decide whether not having a .ac address, which means 90% of my communications go unread is a disability, or just an efficient triage device.

I talk and write too much, that's joy for you. Sometimes I produce word salad, that's an artifact of my ancient keyboard, after a few beers I don't notice its spontaneous dances around the text. in time to correct them.

Some days I wake up female, some days I wake up male, sometimes I am a cockroach of undefined gender, politics or sexual orientation, but never do I wake up a fan of Deepak Chopra, nor of "excessive certainty".

I study "religion" also. My last experiment was to induce the profound euphoria that seven years of buddhist meditation many years ago made easy, it is pretty much exactly like the joy of music, nature or a game well played, I took a minute dose of antipsychotic and it went away. Like I thought, it is an entirely chemo-neurological event. More spectacular nirvana like experiences, on careful deconstruction, are frontal lobe epilepsy, being bipolar, and having it under constant inspection, hence minimum concrete manifestation, I am not surprised. So I have yet to come across a supposedly spiritual experience that I could not prove to my satisfaction to be hormonal, neurological, psychotic, or similar. Believe me, I have gone deep within them.

I am still looking in the bottom of my crucible at the residue, trying new solvents and catalysts to see if the thin scum, now almost a perfectly reflective nanoparticle coating, will evaporate too.
I have an uncomportably exiting feeling, that beneath the modern strata lies an ancient sketch of the human condition, highly adaptive in paleolithic times, only useful now if "recontexed".

Please take the piss, I will. It's the only way we will think new thought never before thunk.
My spellchecker is stuck on Portuguese, so it marks almost everything as wrong, which is suitably chastening.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Welcome to PF!

 

[Steve Kane]

Thank you Greg, I promise not to be boring, off topic, off my head, but if I'm tedious one may troll me hard for my own good.

 

[Aufbauwerk 2045]

Hi. I'm a know-it-all (sorry I mean polymath) also, and like you I try to understand everything rationally, in particular religion. Also I tend to be verbose and opinionated at times. So I look forward to your posts. :)

I am a total geek, that is to say I am totally and obsessively interested in absolutely everything that might submit to scientific method, and a few wild cards (penny shares?), that I keep an eye on. And always have been, for sixty years now.

Not being an idiot two things excite me most,

1) a credible item that seems to overturn my most cherised assumptions,

2) where some esoteric insight within a very obscure discipline that "nobody outside it" could ever get, is remarkably similar to something far away in a similarly deep silo.

Lobbing it from one silo into the other and standing back, can be fun.
I have yet to decide whether not having a .ac address, which means 90% of my communications go unread is a disability, or just an efficient triage device.

I talk and write too much, that's joy for you. Sometimes I produce word salad, that's an artifact of my ancient keyboard, after a few beers I don't notice its spontaneous dances around the text. in time to correct them.

Some days I wake up female, some days I wake up male, sometimes I am a cockroach of undefined gender, politics or sexual orientation, but never do I wake up a fan of Deepak Chopra, nor of "excessive certainty".

I study "religion" also. My last experiment was to induce the profound euphoria that seven years of buddhist meditation many years ago made easy, it is pretty much exactly like the joy of music, nature or a game well played, I took a minute dose of antipsychotic and it went away. Like I thought, it is an entirely chemo-neurological event. More spectacular nirvana like experiences, on careful deconstruction, are frontal lobe epilepsy, being bipolar, and having it under constant inspection, hence minimum concrete manifestation, I am not surprised. So I have yet to come across a supposedly spiritual experience that I could not prove to my satisfaction to be hormonal, neurological, psychotic, or similar. Believe me, I have gone deep within them.

I am still looking in the bottom of my crucible at the residue, trying new solvents and catalysts to see if the thin scum, now almost a perfectly reflective nanoparticle coating, will evaporate too.
I have an uncomportably exiting feeling, that beneath the modern strata lies an ancient sketch of the human condition, highly adaptive in paleolithic times, only useful now if "recontexed".

Please take the piss, I will. It's the only way we will think new thought never before thunk.
My spellchecker is stuck on Portuguese, so it marks almost everything as wrong, which is suitably chastening.

 

[Steve Kane]

See my one and only, today, having to count to ten to avoid being seriously sarcastic. Supper time approaches, I try never to do this kind of thing afterwards, it is not good for my sleep. Unless the quality of debate improves a lot, I may not bother again.

 

[Steve Kane]

PS nice to meet you, thanks for the comment.

 

[Evo]

PS nice to meet you, thanks for the comment.

Please use the "edit" button when you need to add something to a post instead of making several small posts in a row, I see you've done the same thing in your other thread, just a helpful hint.

 

[Steve Kane]

I think I thought of that, but the whole experience of total lack of curiosity and vast certainty at first contact, brought upon me the realisation that pehaps I couldn't be bothered.
Thank you anyway.
"People will never forget how you made them feel". So true.